Moving On to Arran

[Kyle]The night after the loafing in Sanda was great. The water was flat calm and the boats just floated over their anchors without pulling. I woke up in the middle of the night to see the moon streaming through the window surrounded by a halo of thin cirrus – the weather was on its way. By the morning, the clouds had thickened into a solid gray mass. Occasional gusts would whip around the island and send us skittering to the end of our rode, where we stopped with a lurch as the line stretched. The gust would leave and the water would flatten and we would float around aimlessly for a while before the next one. By the time it was time for us to leave, the wind was howling constantly and it was raining hard. One by one, we watched one wet, miserable crew after another pull up anchor, and then it was our turn.

While we were still in the lee of Sanda, we put up only the mainsail with two reefs in and then turned north. Once out of the lee of the island, even with practically no sail up, we flew North up Kilbrannan Sound. The wind and waves increased by the minute and soon we were surfing down big waves while being pushed by winds of almost 40 knots. The pelting rain brought the visibility to near zero. The wind was from almost directly behind us, which is about the only point of sail in which we have no protection from our cockpit enclosure. We keep the back panels rolled up while sailing so that we have access to the sail control lines and the deck. It wasn’t long before I was completely soaked at the helm. The rain dripping down my neck and running up my sleeves eventually made my raingear about as effective as a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. At least it wasn’t too cold. I kept thinking about the solo sailor who pulled his anchor right before us and disappeared into the rain. His boat gave him no protection whatsoever from the weather. He had no choice but to sit outside in the full force of the wind and rain. As it was, it didn’t take me too long to think we were all a bit crazy to be out here. The Coast Guard kept issuing gale warnings and dire forecasts. Maryanne, who I forced to stay inside as there was no point in us both being wet, reminded me that it was probably a choice between having good weather on a sailing day or a ‘shore’ day. Footprint is a wind powered boat, after all, and these conditions, while miserable, were not the worst we’ve seen.

As we approached our planned anchorage at Carradale, I could see that it was completely untenable. The winds were double what were forecast and they had also failed to swing so that we would have offshore winds and thus flat seas. The anchorage was a maelstrom of six foot whitecaps. There was no way we were anchoring there, so we just kept going. We had good enough speed at we would be able to make our next destination on the flood.

Looking up into the sound the day before from the top of Sheep Island had made me very excited about sailing between the green mountains on either side of the sound. I was so disappointed that today, the rain and fog completely obscured all of it from view. Nothing could be seen past the raindrops dripping off the brim of my hat except the boat and, beyond it, a featureless gray. Actually, come to think of it, I did see one fishing boat appear and disappear at the limit of visibility.

We sailed around to the protected northern side of Arran and the seas finally calmed. At Loch Ranza, the Lochranza and Catacol Sea Society have installed 12 free visitor moorings in deep water, saving us (Maryanne) from having to go through the kerfuffle of dealing with the whole anchor setup in the pouring rain. The moorings were lacking in pendants, though, so instead of just grabbing a line and cleating it aboard, Maryanne had to hang over the side and thread ours through the eye on top of the ball. The Gemini, like most other sailboats, has a tendency to bear off downwind when stopped. This made it very hard to maintain position at the ball, but Maryanne managed to capture it with both bow lines on the first try. It’s amazing what the motivation to not stay in the rain any longer than necessary can do.

We set up the rain catcher, peeled off our dripping clothes to dry in the cockpit and then hunkered down for the night. The good news is that between the wind and rain, we had full batteries and 30 more liters of water by morning.

No pictures for this blog - heavy rain and low cloud made it totally pointless to even pull out the camera!